From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: Zingers
So, another pretty good week. Real feeling here and elsewhere that, after a false dawn last week and the previous week, and in the three weeks before that, that last week was the worst week we have ever endured and that now, finally, we really have hit rock bottom. This is the point we have been looking forward to with a good deal of excitement for some time now.
Here at the Unit and elsewhere, there is a palpable party atmosphere as analysts and advisers sense that things literally cannot get any worse.
Thinking about recovery tactics, one idea is that we might want to turn to humour? People find you charming on a private level. Last week when you pretended to have DC's head in a vice and you mimed how you'd tighten and tighten and tighten it till it popped like a ripe watermelon, that was funny. Everyone was laughing. Not as much as you, but we were naturally going to begin to tire eventually.
Now, as we reassured you last week when you stumbled into the Unit, Cable's line about you going from Stalin to Mr Bean in a few weeks was not actually effective in any way. Nonetheless it has stuck in the public mind, solidified political perceptions and, in a surface-y, unimportant sense, been hugely damaging.
Therefore we've been brainstorming similar "zingers" for you to hurl back.
On funding, which is still playing big, a possible response is to try to do a Blair and brush it off as a lot of blather. You could say (as long as it is with a hell of a lot of twinkle): "There was no deception - senior figures in the Labour Party were simply under the impression that over the past few years, David Abrahams had undergone a remarkable transformation, from one property developer into a number of different human beings, all making large donations to party funds!"
Might work, but probably not worth a try.
For the Tories, we still like the line we suggested to you recently: "The House has noticed the Leader of the Opposition's remarkable transformation over the past few weeks from being a fat-faced, self-satisfied, morally bankrupt, over-privileged dipstick into being a fat-faced, self-satisfied, over-privileged dipstick."
We know you were unsure about this when we faxed it through. But it's not a typing error: the joke is to repeat the same phrase twice. We can explain again to you why this might be funny whenever you have 15 minutes in your diary.
One final one to have up your sleeve. For someone else, not sure who as yet: "Everyone has noticed his remarkable transformation in the past few weeks from . . . Adolf Hitler to Mr Magoo!"
For this joke to work, it really needs to be someone who is a bit like Hitler, a bit like Mr Magoo. William Hague? Nick Brown?
Let us know your thoughts.
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